Prep Soccer: 5-minute stretch dooms Pretzels in loss to Indians

Wednesday

Sep 4, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 4, 2013 at 3:05 AM

FREEPORT — If not for a rough five-minutes in the first half, Freeport would’ve found itself in a much different soccer match with Hononegah on Tuesday. But as it was, the three goals that the Indians scored during that stretch was too much for the Pretzels to overcome in a 5-1 loss in the NIC-10 opener.

Adam J. Kradle

FREEPORT — If not for a rough five-minutes in the first half, Freeport would’ve found itself in a much different soccer match with Hononegah on Tuesday. But as it was, the three goals that the Indians scored during that stretch was too much for the Pretzels to overcome in a 5-1 loss in the NIC-10 opener.

The match was scoreless through the first 17 minutes of action before Hononegah finally broke through. And once the Indians did, things began to snowball on Freeport.

Andrew Eggers got behind the Pretzel defense for the opening goal at the 22:46 mark. Just 44 seconds later, Nick Stella added the Indians second goal. Then at the 17:39 mark, Zach Moore put the Indians up 3-0, which was the lead they took into halftime.

“It was some pretty poor soccer for that span of time,” Freeport coach Nick Namio said.

But the Pretzels were able to weather the storm following the three goals in five minutes. After halftime the Indians continued to posses well and get shots on goal -- they out-shot the Pretzels 13-2 in the second half and 22-5 for the match -- but were held scoreless for the majority of the second half. That gave Freeport a chance to get back in the match.

“We made a few adjustments, and we were able to keep them further away from our goal and gave ourselves some transition opportunities,” Namio said.

Freeport took advantage of its first second-half opportunity when junior forward Dante Euell knocked one in off a breakaway with 23:28 on the clock, and that got the Pretzels thinking comeback.

“We came back from a 4-0 deficit the other day and tied it so we knew it was possible,” Winters said.

Following their first goal, the Pretzels continued to turn up the pressure a little on Hononegah and came very close to scoring a second goal just two minutes later. But despite having a golden opportunity from in close, the second tally that could’ve changed the match eluded Freeport.

“I think it was 2-3 our momentum would’ve been really high,” Winters said. “It might have been a different outcome.”

The Pretzels wouldn’t have another chance that good for the remainder of the match, but they held off the Indians until the final two minutes when Hononegah tallied its final two goals with Freeport playing aggressively to try and move up into scoring position.